by Robert A. Caro
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Product Description
The most important, acclaimed, and galvanizing political biography of our era--which began with The Path to Power--continues in this national bestseller. In Means of Ascent Lyndon Johnson's almost mythic personality is seen at its most nakedly ambitious. The culminating drama--the explosive heart of the book--is Caro's illumination of one of the great political mysteries of the century, the "87 votes that changed history."
Amazon.com Review
The second installment in a projected four-volume biography of LBJ that opened with The Path to Power, Means of Ascent shines a harsh light on the early political years of one of America's most paradoxical presidents. The man who would later ram civil rights legislation through a reluctant Congress, and then be brought down by Vietnam, came out of a political swamp--Caro gives a graphic picture of the Texas democratic political machine at its most corrupt. The climax of the book is LBJ's election to the Senate in 1948, an election he won by 87 dubious votes out of almost a million. That vote arguably changed history. This book won the 1990 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Ambition and Narcissism, 2008-11-06
Ambition and Narcissism
I wish I could remember what I thought of LBJ when I voted for the first time in 1960. Moving to Berkeley that Fall to work on my doctorate, I kept my residency in Illinois in order to vote for JFK in what would be a crucial swing state. Those who believe Gore was robbed of the election in 2000 forget that JFK won by something like one vote in every county in the country. Mine was one of those. But I can only remember LBJ through the lens of his civil rights presidency and his tragic flaw, Vietnam. Listening to the first three volumes of Caro's work on tape, I can't help feeling that it in order to make sense of the LBJ he has painted we need to know what happened to him when he became president. Where is volume four? Were my feelings toward LBJ in 1960 analogous to what I thought of JFK's phony missile gap and Cuba bashing. Did I regard LBJ simply as a bad guy JFK needed as VP in order to get elected (As it turned out Cuba policy was not expediency until JFK woke up during the Bay of Pigs; after the election the missile gap simply was disappeared). Did I have any idea what a fowl piece of work LBJ was? Well Caro leaves us no doubt. Although I tired of the author's repeated descriptions of how LBF invaded what is called personal space: his ham hands on people shoulders, his iron grip through lapel holes---I probably would have slugged him---,had little use for the detail descriptions of the Senate chamber and would have had liked more on the political context of the third volume---what was going on after the mid fifties besides civil rights---, Caro's work is indeed monumental. We have LBJ ambitious, lying, manipulating and deeply narcissistic. He was in bed with some of the most reactionary men in the US, southern racists, McCarthyite anti-communists and reactionary Texas oil barons. LBJ's maiden "We of the South" speech and his sycophantic manipulation of lonely Richard Russell and Sam Rayburn, let alone his viscious redbaiting in his destruction of Leland Olds, are more than enough to condemn him to the trash barrel of history. His abuse of Lady Bird and then abject dependence on her after his heart attack earn him nothing but contempt. How did he pull it off for so many years and no one successfully expose him? Caro sees LBJ as a master, well that must have been the case for the years covered by the three volumes. Master magician at manipulation of people, master of working the Senate system, master of keeping his backers out of the lime light, master of tricking the Senate liberals, master at manipulating the press. And yet what did it all achieve. He ran a Truman like committee during the Korean war supposedly to expose corruption in war preparation, but unlike Truman driving around the country really looking, Johnson's committee garnered phony press coverage but did almost nothing. He was able to make the Senate a more efficient institution, but to what end. In all of Caro's writing I don't have a sense of what LBJ accomplished politically. He stifled civil rights under the guise of passing a civil rights bill. He enriched his backers, but what was his role in the Cold War, economic justice, etc. Maybe I missed that in all the detail of how he ran the Senate.
In volume one, Caro's history of the Senate is interesting. I get it that the Senate stood in the way of reform in the years after reconstruction. His treatment of Russell is masterful both in how Russell kept the appearance of Southern liberalism despite the vicious racist and cold warrior which lay behind the facade. Although Caro paints a picture of Johnson manipulating Russell, Johnson really carried Russell's water: stymie civil rights. As the country changed after WWII and the power of both northern liberals and Negroes grew, Russell felt the South would be outnumbered unless it planted a Trojan horse in the liberal camp. Johnson was to be that Trojan horse. The 1956 civil rights debate revealed Russell's true colors when he lost it on the Senate floor, and Johnson's final bill revealed to the liberals how empty Johnson's liberalism really was. In addition Johnson's flawed attempt at getting the 1956 nomination when he had no chance showed how limited his mastery could be and how blinded he was by his narcissism. Because I listened to the books out of order, vol. 2, 3, then 1, and am a bit confused, it seems to me like Johnson went into some sort of eclipse after '56 as the Republicans began to move leftward to grab the initiative from the Democrats, particularly on civil rights, and Johnson faced the underlying contradiction that he couldn't satisfy his Southern racist backers and woo the northern liberals at the same time. Caro gives us a glimpse of what came next when he shows how the Senate rejected Johnson's' attempts to maintain control once he became vice-president and how his failure completely deflated Johnson. After Johnson left the presidency (in disgrace as I remember it), did his narcissism again invert?
I think the most dramatic parts of Caro's books are his description of civil rights in the United States. Although I worked in the Chicago stock yards in the late forties and early fifties, remember well its strict color line, its shuffling blacks, experienced segregation in New Orleans, the Klan in Indianapolis and am a veteran of the Congress of Racial Equality in the 60s', I found myself becoming teary-eyed at Caro's rendition of the struggle for equality, the violence of lynching in Russell's Georgia, the hatred that dripped from the lips of Eastland and his ilk on the Senate floor. How Johnson could have pulled off any appearance of liberality is testament to how powerless Humphrey, Lehman, Douglas and others were in a racist country where Southerners had a hammerlock on the Senate. That Johnson and Russell could, through their superior understanding of Senate rules, outmaneuver the liberals was testament to the latter's' naïveté, but when push came to shove there was the filibuster and no way to overcome that---as with Bush's 2000 win---the constitution did not provide for any way around the Senate's inbuilt conservatism, even though Caro, says that prior to the civil war the Senate was the chamber for debate of great issues. After Reconstruction it became a tool of entrenched power and a stumbling block to change. It is interesting how Southern Senators could throw up Reconstruction as an evil, equivalent to Communism, in debates about civil rights. Reconstruction is, in my mind, a big hole in American history. Besides the dated works of Foner and chapters in history textbooks, I have found no good history of Reconstruction.
Well LBJ changed the US when he inherited the presidency. How that fit into who he was before 1960 is still a mystery to me. In fact there are other mysteries: his affair with Helen Gehagen Douglas, how he could get away with his abuse of the people around him, why was he never exposed in terms of his real allies---hard to image that in the age of the internet--- or maybe he was but it never took for some reason. Caro pictures LBJ as a consummate con man. Was he? Could Hubert Horatio Humphrey have been so cowed when snubbed for his hubris in his maiden Senate year (and later tutored on behavior by LBJ), that he didn't see through his one time mentor? I remember the New Left Power Structure pamphlets about LBJ, Brown and Root and Vietnam. But that was all after '66 or '67. I NEED volume four.
Charlie Fisher author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
As Good as Advertised, 2008-07-26
The book is exceptional. Caro's central thesis with LBJ is that power not only corrupts, it reveals. LBJ's lust for power and his determination to run over any and all in his way is never more evident than his stealing of the 1948 Democratic nomination for senator from Coke Stevenson. Caro parallels LBJ and Stevenson as a contrast between the modern vs. the primitive, the unprincipled/corrupt vs. the principled/honest. And, yet, Caro is not entirely unsympathetic to LBJ. He gets to the heart of LBJ's genius in manipulating people and the political system to his advantage.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
1948 Texas Senate Race, 2007-11-17
Means of Ascent traces Johnson's career from a rather lackluster legislator (i.e. in passing national legislation) in the U.S. House of Representatives, to his all or nothing gamble on the 1948 Texas U.S. Senate race. In between these years, we learn of Johnson's "war service", his wife's role in her husband's congressional office, their business dealings with a radio station in Austin, and other events. All of this is integral to Johnson's story and his political ambitions. As Caro discussed, these were not Johnson's happiest years as he seemed unsatisfied with his position in Congress and his perceived lack of power.
Caro introduces us to another key political figure in this book, Coke R. Stevenson. This was the man referred to as "Mr. Texas". Caro's portrayal of Stevenson offers a stunning contrast to the portrayal of Johnson. Coke Stevenson's life journey seemed to be the stuff of legends. He was a self-educated man who lived the outdoors. He reluctantly joined the world of Texas politics to get what he saw as a job that needed to be done done. He served as a state legislator, speaker of the house, lieutenant governor and governor. Stevenson seemed to represent what Texans liked most about their state and themselves. His popularity was perhaps unrivaled by any other state political figure. Perhaps Caro's portrayal of Stevenson is a bit too laudatory, but if Caro's task is to set the differences between Johnson and Stevenson in terms of their character traits, their personalities, their politics, etc., then he has succeeded brilliantly.
Once again, the Johnson that emerges in the heat of another major campaign is the same tireless, unstoppable man who will go to any and all lengths to win, as seen in Caro's other books. During the 1948 Democratic Primary, Johnson even utilized a new mode of transportation, the helicopter, for his campaign stops. Stevenson, in contrast, simply drove to different towns and county courthouse squares to meet and greet people, with little press attention. Stevenson, according to Caro, trusted that Texans already knew his record and where he stood and therefore he didn't have to respond to Johnson's attacks.
But once again, the nasty side of politics evinced itself. Large amounts of special interest money were used in the campaign, especially on Johnson's behalf. Votes were bought, especially from ethnic voting blocs from border counties where political bosses like George Parr reigned supreme. Additional voter fraud issues like stuffing of ballot boxes and the likes would come to light as well.
Many people, even in Johnson's inner circle, knew the hurdles they faced in defeating the popular Stevenson, a man regarded as unbeatable. In the end, Johnson would win by 87 votes, made possible no doubt by the hundreds if not more than hundreds of votes added to ballot boxes such as in the infamous Precinct 13 of Jim Wells County, and probably from other counties too. Parr's right hand man Luis Salas confessed this later and even said that Stevenson votes had been counted as Johnson votes.
Stevenson didn't give in without a fight. A Federal District Court judge took up the case and things began to appear bleak for Johnson's electoral "victory". Johnson's men, however, proved skillful in their legal maneuvering to halt the judge's order to open the disputed ballot boxes from Precinct 13 and possibly from other areas. With the assistance of Abe Fortas, they secured a hearing in front of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who decided in favor of the Johnson team to stop the opening of ballot boxes. This decision ended the dispute and Johnson became the Democratic nominee and eventual winner in the fall election.
Johnson had indeed staked everything on this senate race and had won. But though he won the battle, it seems almost irrefutable that his victory was tainted by real voter fraud. Caro's treatment of both Johnson and Stevenson has earned some criticism. The portrait of Johnson that emerges is not flattering. Johnson certainly had some undesirable traits, but the nature of the politics and corruption seen at that time also contributed to the unflattering picture that is presented here, though they were often connected to his campaign. Stevenson is portrayed as a rock solid character who seemingly possessed very few flaws, though Caro did briefly touch on part of his record as governor of Texas, especially concerning the lynching of a black man during his tenure, as well as other elements of Stevenson's very conservative philosophy. Whether the character portrayals of either one of or of both is totally fair and accurate, is not for me to say, but I think Caro has done his homework and his evaluations seem solid in many ways.
Caro excels in presenting the human dimensions to his narrative, especially in the quest for power. The thrill of the campaign also comes to life. If you're a political junkie, you'll love this book. Overall, a great reading experience and great insights into Lyndon Johnson's life and times.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Journalistic History at its Best -- but Most Heartless, 2007-09-08
The second in Caro's amazingly detailed, trenchant, fascinating, truthful, insightful and heartless multi-volume portrait of Johnson. What did anyone -- even Lyndon Johnson -- ever do to deserve a biographer like this? Not that I fault Caro: His tenacious and scrupulously accurate determination that the truth be told is journalistic history at its highest level of professionalism. But under, or alongside, the chicanery, the narcissism, the shameless expediency of his subject's persona there also was a charisma, a thoroughly human drive to assert himself and make an imprint on an indifferent universe that also is breathtaking, and the sheer wonder and humanity of Johnson is not given enough due. But enough of the cavil, because this book is a supreme accomplishment, of research, writing and psychological insight. It is fascinating to see Johnson's vast inflation of his military "career," and the way he continued to lie about it to people who knew he was lying, and who he knew knew he was lying. And the account of the stealing of the 1948 Senate race is so gripping, so suspenseful even though one knows the outcome before the book is opened, that it defies the effort to put the book down. I had read the book in fits and starts until about page 210, then picked it up at about 9:30 p.m., and could not stop until I finished, at 2:15 a.m. This book will be richly rewarding for anyone interested in the 1940s, and/or in contemporary American politics.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Taught me to loathe Lyndon, love Lady Bird, and admire Coke, 2007-07-11
I recently read the second volume of Robert A. Caro's magisterial biography of LBJ, entitled MEANS OF ASCENT, and from that book I learned to loathe one man, Lyndon Johnson, whose signal accomplishments in civil rights and social justice are difficult to reconcile with his profound character flaws; to admire another, Coke Stephenson, who, for all the baggage of racism and reactionary ideology that came along with his frontier conservatism was, by all accounts, an outstanding, even heroic human being; and to hold in the very warmest regard one woman, Lady Bird Johnson, who, in spite of her paralyzing shyness and the outrageous abuse heaped upon her by her husband, was not only steadfast in her love and loyalty, but also took infinite pains to remake herself, agonizingly, into a successful businesswoman, canny politician, eloquent speaker, pioneering conservationist, important philanthropist, and accomplished public figure of the very first rank.
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